


Ocean Gold

by PokeChan



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Based on a Tumblr Post, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeChan/pseuds/PokeChan
Summary: From tumblr user kamuishiro:KuroFai soulmate!AU where you can see every color except the color of your soulmate’s eyes until you meet. Kurogane, who can’t see gold, assumes being magically hurled through time and space must have screwed something up because he can suddenly see gold after arriving at Yuuko’s shop andno onethere has golden eyes.





	Ocean Gold

**Author's Note:**

> I read this post a little while ago and just could not let the idea go. A big thanks to kamuishiro for giving me permission to write this fic pased on the post! You're a peach. If any of you are interested in reading the entire post and/or reblogging it [here you go.](http://kamuishiro.tumblr.com/post/158979240996)

The first time they notice, Kurogane is young. He has followed his father into Suwa’s markets and is watching the exchanges with the rapt attention of a child seeing something for the first time. His father offers the merchant some coins and Kurogane recognizes the copper and silver but there are a few that look wrong. They look like normal stone, and he points this out.

For a few moments there is nothing but baffled stares, but then Kurogane’s father smiles and laughs and tells Kurogane that those are gold coins, which surely cannot be right. Those coins do not look a thing like the golden koi in the ponds back at the manor, and Kurogane says as much. It isn’t until he makes it back home to his mother that Kurogane gets a proper answer for any of his questions.

“This is gold,” his mother says, holding up one of her hair ornaments. It looks like dull pewter to him. “It’s like a yellow sort of color,” she says, frowning as she tries to explain. “But it’s not important. One day you will see it for yourself. Gold is the color of your soulmate’s eyes.”

His mother’s eyes are a beautiful, dark shade of brown like the wooden floors of the manor and the healthy soil of the earth. His father’s eyes are red, like Kurogane’s, and brighter than any flower that blossoms in all of Suwa. His mother tells him the story of what it was like to see red for the first time, how life became so much more vibrant with it added to her vision. His father jokes about how dull and grey his world had been before Kurogane’s mother had brought the richness of her eyes into his life.

Kurgane wonders how seeing gold for the first time will feel.

-

It feels like a cold slap of water to his face.

Ginryuu, he has always known, has a golden head, which has always been an unremarkable grey to him. Today, however, she shines brightly, even in the rain. Gold is a fascinating color, Kurogane thinks. It’s as if someone took sunlight and condensed it into stone. He is forced to part with her, but that is not the only thing leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

No one in the witch’s yard has golden eyes.

He looks at the sleeping princess before outright dismissing the idea. It’s obvious she and the boy are soulmates, and when her eyes finally open a few days later they’re as green a fresh spring leaves. They pack to move on and Kurogane resigns himself to his fate. Something about crossing dimensions must have given him the ability to see the color gold without meeting his soulmate. 

Maybe when he returns to Nihon the color will vanish again. Not that it overly matters, he’s never looked for his soulmate and until that day in the witch’s yard he had believed he didn’t care if he ever met them or not.

He realizes now that he had been holding out a small bit of hope that they would stumble upon him one day.

-

The children take to him and he to them. Before he can stop himself he’s considering how his father would act towards them and once he is at that point there is no hope of going back. He teaches Syaoran to fight and to be responsible with his strength, and in doing so reminds himself of the forgotten lesson. He encourages Sakura and insists on showing her that her limits are beyond where she fears they might be, but are still to be respected when reached. He supports her and does what he can to bolster her confidence while balancing keeping the pair of them away from reckless harm.

And speaking of reckless harm… there’s the magician, Fai.

Kurogane knows the man is a liar. Fai is hiding something, or many somethings, and he’s running away from his past. He’s sure Fai has some sort of goal, but damned if Kurogane knows what it is. As far as he can tell Fai’s only goal is to never go back to the world he left and perhaps, if it happens in a way that suits him, to die. 

Still, for all that Fai is a coward towards everything involving himself he is brave enough to love Syaoran and Sakura. Kurogane wonders if Fai even realizes how much he’s come to care about the children, worries about what he might do when he realizes how much he’s let them in. There is a man behind those many masks and meaningless smiles that is real. There is a good man within Fai D. Flourite who is kind and loving and can be brave. For all the weakness and cowardice that Kurogane sees he can see just as much strength. It’s captivating. 

Kurogane hates that Fai’s eyes are blue, hates himself for such a petty feeling. They’re beautiful, sure, but they are so far from gold it’s laughable. In Outo he decides that blue is his least favorite color. In Yama, he decides that the color of Fai’s eyes doesn’t matter at all.

He accepts that he loves Fai. 

The golden eye that looks up at him is a jagged knife in his gut on top of all else. But he remembers Kamui’s eyes, a vampire’s eyes, and before Fai falls back to the cot the unnatural gold is swallowed again by the ocean of blue. Kurogane isn’t disappointed, he’s too raw for such a mild emotion. The golden eye is a borrowed color, he reminds himself, it comes with the blood. Nothing between he and Fai has changed.

“Good morning, Kurogane.”

Except everything between he and Fai has changed.

There are moments, moments of unforgettable and deplorable weakness, where Kurogane wonders if it is worth it to fight so hard for someone who is not his soulmate. Fai is not meant for him, Fai belongs to someone else, his soul a perfect fit for another that is not Kurogane. Every time, though, he tosses those thoughts aside. He wants Fai alive, that’s all he is asking for. If Fai wishes to love someone else Kurogane will do nothing to stop him, if Fai does not love him in return then so be it. All Kurogane wants is for Fai to live, to exist in the universe and to keep on fighting. He doesn’t think it’s too tall of an order. 

Kurogane feels guilty about his own soulmate. He hopes they forgive him for loving another, hopes they will understand. He won’t abandon them or brush them aside. He will welcome them into his life as he has always intended to and allow things to take their natural course.

He hopes they are nothing like Fai. The reminder would be too much, he thinks.

In Celes, Kurogane gets all of the answers in all of the ways he never wanted. In Celes, he shows Fai once and for all exactly what he means to him. 

In Nihon, ocean blue magic recedes to reveal treasured gold. In Nihon, Kurogane’s heart all but falls out of his chest still beating.

The only thing he can think for a while is that Fai knew, Fai had known the entire time. Fai had seen red for the first time that day in Yuuko’s yard in Kurogane’s eyes and on his armor and face. Fai had said nothing, hadn’t even flinched. Kurogane doesn’t really know what to think about it, he’s not even sure what he feels at this revelation or at the fact that Fai is conspicuously not meeting his eyes anymore.

Seishirou shows up and in the whirlwind of action and tragedy and death Kurogane never gets a chance to figure out his emotions. It feels like one blow after another, a never ending onslaught on Kurogane’s heart. Fai. Sakura. Ginryuu and Tomoyo. By the end of it all he’s exhausted to the very core of himself. He doesn’t even turn to greet the whispering steps that let themselves into his room.

“Kuro-sama is still awake.” Not a question. Fai helps himself to the space beside Kurogane and joins him in gazing up at the moon. It’s beginning to sink lower in the sky, though dawn is still hours off. 

“You knew.” There is no sense in trying to avoid or dance around the subject. They’re better than that, especially now.

For his part, Fai doesn’t flinch away or try to hide behind a smile. He sighs and nods and fiddles with the hem of his sleeve. “Red’s a beautiful color.”

Gold is beautiful as well, but Kurogane doesn’t return the compliment. Instead, he settles Fai with a stern look. “Why didn’t you say anything? You knew the whole time and I thought- I thought I-” 

He can’t bring himself to say what he had begun to believe -- that he had somehow been broken by the transportation between worlds. Even as he had woken up in Nihon and seen the gold of Tomoyo’s headdress Kurogane had been scared that his journey had robbed him of a soulmate. Instead, he finds out Fai has been with him the entire time, knowingly keeping the secret from him, one more among many.

“What would you have had me say?” Fai asks, and Kurogane can forgive the bitterness he hears. “I couldn’t tell you. I was supposed to _kill you_. If our places had been switched would you have told me?”

“Yes,” Kurogane says without hesitation. It’s the truth and he’s knows it the second he says it. Fai gapes at him, golden eye wide in disbelief. “If I decided I would actually kill you then being your soulmate would put you at ease around me and make it easier to lower your guard, if I decided not to kill you then there would be no reason to hide the truth,” he explains. 

There’s new surprise in Fai’s expression and Kurogane reminds him that he is a killer. Kurogane has killed many more people than Fai ever has, or likely ever will. He is a warrior, a protector, and his precious things are very often under threat. Kurogane has been trained to kill and plot and, though he’s had little need of the latter, he’s always excelled in both. He is, when all the poetry and oaths and pretty words are stripped away, a murderer, putting the lives of those he loves above the lives of others. He’s learned to not be so reckless with the lives of his enemies, but ending their lives will always be an option for him.

“You should know me well enough by now,” Kurogane says. “I don’t lie, and I’m not a man who deals out flowery language to make nasty things seem kinder, but I care about you, same as I did when I saved your life in Tokyo, same as when I cut my arm off in order to keep you with me. What you do with that is up to you, but I feel like I’ve made where I stand very clear.”

Fai frowns at him, looking insulted. “You would be fine if I decided I still didn’t want you?”

“ _No_ ,” Kurogane hisses, doing what he can to keep the pain from his voice and turning to look away from Fai to hide his expression. Like a coward. “That’s the last thing I want, but what place is it of mine to tell you who to love?”

There is silence and Fai does not speak again until Kurogane forces himself to meet his gaze. When Fai does speak it is a single, breath word. “Love?”

Knowing what he’s recently learned, Kurogane supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that he needs to spell it out for Fai, that Fai would not just assume that Kurogane had done what he’d done out of love for him. So he does. He gathers his courage and moves with a steadiness that he doesn’t feel in his bones. His eyes do not leave Fai’s as he undoes the ribbon in his hair. 

Everything about Fai is so unlike the people of Nihon. His hair is an even paler gold than his eye and it’s as light as air, the complete opposite of the heavy, dark curtains known to Kurogane’s people. It’s beautiful though, silk spun sunshine, more precious than any gold in any palace or castle in any world. Just like Fai himself.

“Yes,” Kurogane says, bringing a strand of the hair to his lips. He almost stops himself, it feels _too_ intimate, too far, but he needs to make this point, drive it home to Fai and he cannot think of a better way to do it. He kisses Fai’s hair as he looks up into a single, uncomprehending eye. “I love you.”

And just like that tears well up and Fai flings himself into Kurogane’s arms and wails. There’s little else said for the rest of the night. They sit together. Fai cries, and Kurogane soothes him. Fai apologies, and Kurogane forgives him. Fai begins to doze barely an hour before dawn begins to peek over the horizon, and Kurogane carries him into to bedroom and sleeps beside him. Not for the first time and not for the last.


End file.
